Whose self-control development suffers or benefits in the face of adversity? A longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth followed from age 10 to 16

Do stressful life events impact long-term well-being? Annual change in well-being following different life events compared to matched controls

Available longitudinal evidence suggests that personal growth following adversity may not be as prevalent as suggested in cross-sectional research. Firm conclusions regarding resiliency versus post-traumatic growth following adverse events are further tempered by the restricted range of outcomes assessed when examining resilience, the focus on specific adverse events or cumulative adversity scores that hinder comparisons between event types, and the relative scarcity of analyses including matched control groups. The current study addresses these gaps by leveraging longitudinal panel data comparing annual change in well-being from 2018 to 2019 for people who experienced a major life stressor relative to propensity score matched controls who did not experience such stressors over the same period. Moreover, independent comparisons are conducted across three distinct event categories: traumatic interpersonal events (N matched pairs = 1,030), job loss (N matched pairs = 1,361), and birth (N matched pairs = 1,225), and five self-reported well-being indicators: life satisfaction, felt belongingness, self-esteem, meaning in life, and gratitude. Results indicate that people's well-being (across all five indicators) remained consistent over the year in independent analyses of samples experiencing each of the three types of events, and did not differ from matched controls. These findings indicate high population levels of psychological resilience, in the sense that people did not decrease in annual well-being following various life events. These findings also fail to detect significant evidence for possible post-traumatic growth, insofar as such growth might relate to a broad range of different aspects of well-being.

What does a personality science approach to post-traumatic growth reveal?

Recent research has advocated for the value of conceptualizing post-traumatic growth as positive personality change. However, most research continues to use both methodologically suspect assessment tools and unsupported theoretical assumptions. How can personality psychologists contribute to the pursuit of high-quality research on this topic? The current special issue, which grew out of the European Association for Personality Psychology (EAPP) expert meeting on “Integrating Post-Traumatic Growth and Personality Change”, held at the University of Nottingham, on September 16–17, 2019, includes 15 papers that (1) examine short-term change in multiple personality constructs after adversity, (2) highlight the limitations of only assessing post-traumatic growth with retrospective questionnaires, and (3) provide theoretical and methodological recommendations for the continued advancement of the study of post-traumatic growth through the lens of personality psychology. While these papers all address specific ways to advance the personality science of post-traumatic growth, collectively they highlight the many unanswered questions that future research should tackle.